Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Sorry I've been a bit MIA here lately - I took for a few days to visit my sister in the San Francisco Bay Area. It's always so nice to see her and her family there, and I love any chance I can get to just go somewhere, anywhere. But I had another reason for going down there this past weekend. We volunteer-ushered a concert Saturday night.

For us, both being big music fans, it's quality time together doing something we both enjoy. I know the bands we heard probably aren't even on the radar of my readers, but I wanted to mention this because it's the best way I know of to get to see and do cultural events, for free! We like live rock music, so we've found the venues that use volunteers for rock concerts, but this idea can work for just about any cultural event, or for museums, in your town too. Volunteering time instead of spending money is a very viable and affordable option to get out and about. Concert volunteers are usually "cut" early in the evening, so then they can just join the crowd and enjoy the rest of the event. Plus, once you get on the list for an organization, you'll also get invited to the year-end thank-you parties, or maybe get free tickets for another show.

As for our concert this weekend, it was the Progressive Nation Tour - with four bands: Three, Between the Buried and Me, Opeth, and Dream Theater (see, you probably never heard of them). The first three bands were a bit too "metal" for me, but I really liked Dream Theater. And I really love working this venue. The Paramount Theater in Oakland, California is a restored Art Deco Depression-era movie theater - a splendid example of ornate, rococo, gaudy, let's-go-nuts-in-public decorative art, fully and lovingly restored and ornamental as all get-out. In order to work there, volunteers have to go through the tour. It was amazing hearing about how the enormous decorative panels forming the theater walls and the proscenium arch were made and then erected, about the pipe organ still in place, the tunnels and crawl spaces above and below, the myriad little decorative touches everywhere - even the restrooms are amazing! When I don't care for the artists performing, I love spending my time just walking around the place, and I really love the interaction with all the people. Figure out what you'd like to see or do, start asking questions - get yourself on the upcoming events list for the places you'd like to spend some time (instead of money) - and ask who to talk to about volunteering.

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Welcome to Firesign Farm!

writing about sustainability and simple living, high-desert gardening trials and tribulations, canning recipes and home cooking, sewing and other thrifty arts (occasionally, a personal fascination gets thrown into the mix, too).

Sadge (rhymes with badge, short for Sagittarius) and sweet husband Aries live on their semi-rural acre, watching as urban sprawl creeps ever closer. Can wood heat, gardens, clotheslines, and chickens co-exist with strip malls and high-density housing next door?

Where is Firesign Farm?High-desert northern Nevada, near Carson City, the state capital: just 30 minutes drive from Lake Tahoe and the California state line to the west, Reno to the north, and Virginia City and the Comstock Lode to the east.

Notable Quote

Nay, the ordinary things in Nature would be greater miracles than the extraordinary, which we admire most, if they were done but once.~John Donne

After I read the Little House on the Prairie books, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be a pioneer - living off the land, in a cozy little home where my husband and I made everything in it. That dream never died. I did what I could, when I could. And then I met Aries – a fellow pioneer spirit. He started with a tiny house (all the plumbing on one wall of the kitchen – from the sink you’d walk through the shower stall to get to the toilet). He built a garage and added on a bedroom and bathroom. After we were married, we did all the work to turn it into a cozy home – wallpapering, sewing, building furniture, everything from laying floor tiles to texturing the ceiling. This isn't really a farm - it’s an urban homestead, on a little over an acre (half of that still just sand and sagebrush). But over the years we’ve raised horses, a goat, a pig, rabbits, ducks, geese, bees, chickens and guinea fowl (only the latter two here now). I dug up the horse corral with a pitchfork to put in a garden; we used our wedding present money to buy fruit trees. Through canning, dehydrating and cellaring, I rarely buy produce from the store. I'd say my childhood dream came true.